Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Bangkok 2011

ABSTRACT

In recent years agricultural marketing has changed dramatically with a global boom in retail food marketing. Consumers are expressing greater concern for food quality and safety, and greater demand for high-value products. The future for many small farmers is bleak unless they can adapt their farming systems to these changes. Many of the constraints they face are related to lack of adequate know-how and skills. Market-oriented agricultural advisory services can play an important role in helping small farmers overcome these constraints and, in response, many countries in Asia are changing the content of their extension and advisory services. FAO has been at the vanguard of this shift and has developed a variety of training and extension materials in marketing and farm business management to better link small farmers to markets. This publication is a proceedings of a workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand from 11 to 13 May 2010 to raise awareness among heads of agricultural extension services of changes that are occurring and identify ways to meet these challenges by re-orienting agricultural extension services to respond to global and regional trends. The report contains summaries of the country papers as well as information on FAO training and extension materials available.

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ISBN 978-92-5-106773-4

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